Arabella Burton Buckley (1840-1929) was a writer and science educator who championed Darwinian evolution as opposed to the contemporary emphasis on competition and physical survival. This fifth edition of Buckley's debut publication includes her attempts to present the History of Science in a "short and simple way." She writes in her preface, "I venture to hope that this little work may supply that modest amount of scientific information which everyone ought to possess, while, at the same time, it will form a useful groundwork for those who wish afterward to study any special branch of science." Pages 485-495 include chronological tables of the rise and progress of the various branches of science.

Buckley tended to avoid technical language in her writing and instead use narrative and metaphor to make her work accessible to a wide audience, especially young readers. She was a proponent of distancing science from the mechanistic and materialistic philosophies it was sometimes connected to. Instead, Buckley opted to promote science education in moralistic terms: learning as a means to not only become knowledgeable, but also morally good.